Except in instances of actual incitement to violence or gross obscenity, I find the reporting of comments to be odious and underhanded. Claire runs this space and it's up to her to decide what is and is not acceptable. Heaven knows I read many things online that annoy or even outrage me. Sometimes I comment on them. Never would I demand they be censored.
Admittedly, the spate of antisemitic garbage of the kind polluting X is infuriating and troubling. But should it be banned? I don't know. Once could certainly argue that it constitutes incitement to violence. But then the same could be said of the antisemitism of the Left, on campus and elsewhere. If the stuff on X should be banned, then so should the claims of leftie academics and student activists that Israel is an apartheid state, that the Jews are committing genocide against the Palestinian Arabs, etc. Hatred is indivisible is it not?
"If they have the exclusive right to interpret and enforce the guidelines, why am I being asked to do it?"
The answer, Claire - okay, a response - has everything to do with the legalese that binds and bounds the Internet.
While not the same, the two terms, "moderation" and "curation" (which appear soon after the snippet I quote), are similar. Any hateful speech or hurt or negative whatever would be the sole responsibility of the conduit provider; here, Substack. By instead offloading the curation decision to its content providers - in this instance, you, Claire - Substack abrogates its responsibility for the hateful or harmful whatever. The legal responsibility now belongs to the content provider, you. This difference between conduit and content was, up to ~20 years ago, used to be a big thing, Chinese firewalls put into place to protect their separation. But then conduits decided to offer content and the firewalls were dismantled. (It used to be either a) you offered the best conduit but were content-agnostic so as to create a home for the best content. Or b) you offered the best content and searched for the best conduit for your content. The two were mutually exclusive for each to achieve a superlative state of existence. No more.)
All of this is rather silly, when you pause for even a fleeting moment to think about it. After all, Substack nudged you in the direction it wants you to go, "Do this or lose access to Substack." A sharp attorney could argue Substack has assumed ownership of the problem; in effect, you became a Substack employee. Substack of course does not see it that way, or tries to convince you, the content providers, Substack the firm does not. Moral suasion sometimes works better when it arrives with those damnable Terms of Service. This whole moderation and curation thing has the conduit providers - Substack, et alii - tied in knots how to maintain their conduit, make beaucoup bucks... and not face legal peril for moderation and curation; for owning what Cosmopolitan Globalist's readers say in the comment replies... What Cosmopolitan Globalist's EiC writes on Substack.
The mono-directional agreement (Terms of Service) imposed by Large Tech on its users is onerous and repugnant. The problem for the content provider ensues when he or she wants to create his or her own conduit - in addition to creating the content. Yikes!
The grammarian is required to parse the footnotes because... well, the dirty little secret with a lot of www fine print is... it is borrowed (as in, copied and pasted) from other extant sites. Owners of a new site cobble together from 2 or 3 or 4 other sites' fine print to 'create' their own. A grammarian? Just add more cost to an already-scant budget. And anyway, who really knows whether their new site, www.thingamajig.com will ever hit critical mass? So they punt. And if they make it, then come the lawyers with their legalese.
I'm not entirely certain he's real. He just checks too many of the same boxes "Western media lies, you should check out this RT article" crowd that arose with Trump.
I enjoy reading comments from well-informed and thoughtful people, whether or not their views align with my own thinking, but I do sometimes enjoy reading a short diatribe or a feisty riposte when a reader (or Claire), takes issue with someone's statement or PoV. There are times when passion is called for in defense of a strongly-held principle. Often that's not the case very in typical comments sections, where people like to blow off steam -- so unlike here in CG!
If the reader who reported my comment to Substack would like to reveal their identity, we could engage in a spirited but polite debate right here in Claire’s comment section. I’m genuinely interested to know what about that comment was viewed as so outside the boundaries of propriety that it merited being reported.
I’m probably just an old fogey but I think it was better when the ACLU decided who to defend based on the legitimacy of the rights being claimed not the identity or political views of the claimant. I also think it was better when the ADL saw its mission as fighting antisemitism rather than acting as a self-appointed censor of social media platforms.
I remember fondly the days when tattletales were viewed with skepticism and the words “I’m gonna tell on you” were uttered only by little children.
Also interested to know - I found your first comment overly personal and hackle-raising enough to write a roundabout response, but nowhere near the boundary...
I am going to press my newly fashioned "Even Loud Hectoring Critics Ain't Censors" button again though. Looks to me like a lot of reasonable folk are bothered by a sense of mission creep at the ADL, but it really really isn't a censor. It's a lobby. People can ignore it if they like.
If you wanted to stage a play in London that was rude about the royal family or otherwise offended morals, up until 1968 the Lord Chamberlain really could stop you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatres_Act_1968
That's a real censor. These lobby groups are just enthusiastic amateurs.
Tom, pre-Musk Twitter hired a multitude of comment referees with the mandate of screening out abusive and bigoted comments and comments that threatened violence. This was fine, as long as the comments that were deplatformed were genuinely the type that any reasonable person would want to eliminate.
The staff that Twitter hired were generally very young with little work experience. During the pandemic they primarily worked from home and reviewed comments, I suspect, between coffee runs to Starbucks after which they returned to their small but overpriced San Francisco apartments. This may be a bit of a caricature, but you get my point.
The youngsters were led by Yoel Roth, a Swarthmore graduate who later earned a Ph.D. in communications from the Annenberg School. When Twitter, arguably the most important social media site in the world, hired Roth to be its comment-moderator in chief it was basically his first real job (other than a few trivial academic research positions).
The end result was that Twitter had a young, inexperienced corporate executive leading a group of young, inexperienced censors responsible for removing comments that putatively violated Twitter’s policies.
If that was as far as it went, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Sadly that was not as far as it went.
In short order two things happened: Twitter hired very senior former FBI officials to keep an eye on what it’s young censors we’re doing and, next thing you know, the FBI and various Intelligence Agencies are bombarding Twitter with “suggestions” about comments that should be deleted. Whether the FBI’s actions were violations of the First Amendment is currently being tested in Federal Court in Missouri and in a law suit brought by the famous Covid vaccine skeptic, Alex Berenson.
During Congressional testimony Roth and other Twitter employees admitted that they took down the Hunter Biden lap top story at the behest of the FBI even though it violated no Twitter policies. They also admitted that they took down numerous comments about masks and COVID vaccines that contradicted Government recommendations. Twitter’s behavior was not a violation of the First Amendment which doesn’t apply to private companies, but it was clearly censorship. Twitter has a right to censor if it chooses to but we should call what the company did by its real name.
I think all this was inevitable. Content moderation expands into its ultimate manifestation; censorship.
There’s an irony here; Musk’s Twitter now censors more than it did before he purchased the platform. He has little choice. Governments around the world, especially in Europe and Asia insist on it and threaten to financially sanction or ban Twitter if it doesn’t comply with their demands.
None of this should be particularly surprising. We live in an increasingly disintermediated world and like all large institutions with monopolistic powers Governments are not happy with seeing their power diluted. In the old days, Governments had just a small number of newspapers or broadcast outlets to contend with. Now anyone with a social media account or YouTube access can operate as a “newspaper” or broadcast outlet. This makes the flow of information much harder to control and I don’t think most Government agencies like that at all.
Political leaders of all stripes have a narrative to promote and its not surprising that they will resort to almost anything, including censorship, to prevent their narratives from being criticized or exposed.
I’m not entirely sure but I think he’s very attentive to censoring material that foreign countries he needs to appease ask him to censor. For example, he will never say anything excessively critical of China because that country is the second most important market for Tesla. There are plenty of Tweets critical of China on X but whether he’s deplatformed comments that could be viewed by the Chinese Government as excessively critical I do not know. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has.
I do know that many European Governments have adopted policies that require social media sites to curate tweets within an inch of their lives and that India has done the same thing. As an American I don’t care about that very much; it’s not my business. I am curious though why citizens of democratic European nations are so disinterested in Government-mandated policies dictating what they can read and what they can’t.
The bureaucrats in the EU are particularly enthusiastic about the censorship exercise. It’s one of many things that I don’t like about the EU. Canada under Trudeau (he’s the worst leader of any Western nation) is also heading in the wrong direction.
Personally I respect Musk but I have no sympathy for him. Before he bought Twitter he must have realized that advertisers were completely averse to being associated with controversial remarks. Just a couple of years ago, comments contradicting leftist shibboleths were an anathema to advertisers (just ask Fox News). With the advent of the Bud Light and Target controversies over trans issues they are now equally averse to offending the shibboleths held dear by the right.
If Musk thought Twitter could ever survive as a censorship-free space and still rely on advertisers to finance the Company he was delusional. By the way, he was warned about this ahead of time by Twitter executives including the aforementioned Yoel Roth.
If he wants X to be financially viable, Musk will have to come up with a way to induce all of his readers to subscribe. His early changes to the blue-check system were a step in this direction. I don’t think a financial model based on advertising has any chance of prospering in a censorship-free environment. Advertisers are not just nervous about bigotry, pornography and threats of violence, they also don’t like political controversy.
It will be interesting to see how Musk navigates around this reality.
“I think the time has passed, but there probably was room for an open platform that "right-sized" the moderation challenge from the start, had a clear "just tough enough" policy it could resource and stick to, with monetization strategies that didn't leave them beholden to conflict as a source of income...” (Tom Fleming)
I think you might be right though I suspect that it would be hard for the referees to stick to their remit and not fall into the black hole of censorship.
Pre-Musk Twitter would have been a perfect laboratory to test your hypothesis but Twitter blew it. The company’s first mistake was hiring young and inexperienced referees.
The youngsters were handed a fair amount of power despite their inexperience. They were easily intimidated by government officials who contacted them but intimidation wasn’t the only factor. Most of the them had only recently graduated from colleges where tattletale culture was ascendent and political correctness ruled. Steeped in an acute sensitivity to microaggresions, that their curation decisions were impacted by this reality should surprise no one.
Even more importantly, Twitter began hiring former FBI officials (and retired officials from intelligence agencies) with reckless abandon. Scores of retired agents were hired to serve in very senior positions at the social media site. See,
It should surprise no one that these newly hired executives would be particularly solicitous of their old colleagues when the FBI came calling requesting that tweets be deplatformed. But it wasn’t only a question of helping out old friends; these agents brought a mind set with them and protecting the sanctity of the First Amendment was certainly not at the top of their list.
Sadly, we are unlikely to know whether a light but sufficiently aggressive moderation policy could have been enacted.
Thanks WW for a very clear argument (across 3 replies now...).
Agrees first:
1. Twitter, and big tech in general, are very good at the tech part but naive to hapless on bigger picture governance questions. FB was probably worse, Google a bit better, but Twitter absolutely struggled with moderation and ended up doing bizarre things (not all in the direction of banning content either).
2. Moderation will always have a slippery slope to it. The rules can't be mechanical; as well as bad faith content, you'll have bad faith complaints; it's going to be hard work - but IMO not impossible or futile - to hold the line. (FWIW it seems Twitter and similar platforms had a deeper conflict, which was the early realisation that fights drove positive engagement and were good for business - so they weren't *really* keen on tough moderation).
3. If the government can force (or effectively threaten) you to remove content, that IS censorship! I read the link you added - it's clear that while the latest ruling tossed a lot of the earlier findings against the government, it does find the government "likely coerced the platforms" - I dug out the ruling from https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf p42. The court also seems to cleave closer to your usage of "censor" than mine(!). (The Berenson case you mentioned seems to have settled after narrowing down to a contractual question, not First Amendment stuff). I'm no Covid sceptic or anti-vaxxer but it does bother me that governments (even relatively liberal ones) seemed so enthusiastic about clamping down on pretty mild dissent.
4. And more generally, governments everywhere do want to control the message in more subtle ways. They employee a lot of PR & comms people to do it, here in the UK too, and the press are often alarmingly pliant.
BUT...
5. We've moved on from the ADL and ACLU where you started. In my book - still just enthusiastic amateurs. They can't ban anything (they can lobby govt to if they like - that's democracy). Important not to forget this point.
6. [Guess this is the nub] Private platforms can and *should* be worried about offensive drivel and damaging disinformation. Within their terms of service, it's reasonable (and damned hard work) to suppress messages that create an obvious risk of harm. [Deep breath; pausing to adjust conspiracy-resistant mask & underwear] Being specific, in the context of the long & widely advertised aim of Republican operatives (RG et al) to harvest dirt on Hunter B, and similar willingness of foreign powers to oblige, you'd need to be an idiot *not* to take a dim view of Hunter "hack" stories and the implications. Even if they made mistakes in how they called it at the time, it would have been a bigger mistake to wash their hands of the question.
Against all this, does Musk count as an improvement at least in his willingness to tell government to **** off? I'm really not convinced (and as you've noted, outside US he doesn't seem to bother). It just looks like he's politically aligned in a different and more capricious, less transparent but no less troubling way, with the subtracted bonus of the torrent of filth that set off Claire's previous post.
I think the time has passed, but there probably was room for an open platform that "right-sized" the moderation challenge from the start, had a clear "just tough enough" policy it could resource and stick to, with monetization strategies that didn't leave them beholden to conflict as a source of income [noted your subscription point above - agree something like this is pivotal]; saw the risks of being seen to be too close to any government agency and so kept a clear & transparent divide between (mandatory) compliance and autonomous moderation; and owned up very quickly when it got things wrong. Covid was very tough but not the norm. Old Twitter didn't manage this; don't think new X is anywhere nearer to be honest. Sad?
Is Musk still censoring those critical of his businesses? I don’t follow this stuff very much. My main info on these things come from you and Claire, WigWag.
About six months, I think. But I'm not exaggerating. It will be Gab or Parler in another six months. Even the most die-hard are leaving now--all of the people who've been saying, "I will not leave because someone has to stay here and defend decency." Meaning: "I will stay here because I can't believe this has really happened to my beloved Twitter. Despite myself, I think somehow this will be fixed, because you *can't* just do this to Twitter, can you? Twitter is just too important!"
But even I am slowly realizing that yes, Twitter is really over, and it's never coming back.
Here’s an addendum to my comment, Tom. I just noticed that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the Biden Administration violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media platforms into removing some content. Note that I haven’t read the decision, just press reports on the decision. Apparently the Appeals Court narrowed the injunction of the trial court but left it’s most important finding intact.
At least in the states that fall within the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit, the Biden Administration will now be far more constrained in its ability to demand that content be deleted. See,
Tom, I could be wrong about this but my understanding is that the administrative stay ordered by Justice Alito on the limited injunction granted by the 5th Circuit is scheduled to expire at 11:59 pm tomorrow (Wednesday). If it expires the injunction (such as it is) becomes effective. Alternatively, before the Administrative Stay expires the Supreme Court might issue an order overturning the injunction or granting certiorari to consider the case in greater detail.
What was the ADL doing with Twitter that wasn’t fighting antisemitism? They certainly didn’t censor anything on Twitter, which they had no technical ability to do.
Yeah I didn't read his last comment, but globalists show WigWag some love. He is a much more articulate and subdued right wing populist than any you're going to listen to on Fox or on Breitbart or anything like that. I thought I hated him when I first subscribed. I thought he was a noisome far right cretan and a zealot. But after talking to him from time to time, what I think now is: if only they were all like dear Wigwag. If only every right wing populist were as civilized and approachable as he is. He is proof that maybe in fact there is what you could call a school of thought behind what to most of us here see as a great big shitstorm of irrationalism, self-pity, inferiority, and resentment. I think Wigwag is fundamentally wrong that since Trump became president in 2016, therefore "the people have spoken." Or that even if it were the case that "the people have spoken," it follows that liberalism should be ripped out root and branch. This is obviously an absurdity, if not a license for anarchy and tyranny, and I abhor it with every cell of my being, as James Madison, Alexis de Toqueville, and Edmund Burke would have also been aghast. And it surprises me that someone as intelligent as Wigwag who doesn't seem particularly resentful either can arrive at these infantile conclusions regarding the unbounded deservingness of aggrieved citizens, and the capacity of the modern state to reward their infinite needs. That is to say nothing of the morality of the notion. Moreover that morally one could entertain such a glib and unthought-out proposition that to me is unthinkable, really gets to me. I think he must simply have a deep hatred of the neoliberal establishment and he simply has not followed his ideas to their conclusions, because he's having so much fun enjoying the spectacle and how it scares the elites. Because no one in their right mind would desire oligarchy if one knew that's where one's radical political thought inexorably led. But Wigwag is not just to be admired for being one of Claire's most avid readers. Any of you who can't stand him should appreciate how his presence challenges us to defend our beliefs in democratic capitalism. We should be grateful to Wigwag and we should be thanking him for his close-reading, his honesty and his engagement.
I mostly do. But if someone leaves a comment months after an article was published (which happens quite often, actually), I don't have the notifications set to let me know. (If I set them to "notify me whenever there's a new comment," I'd go mad from the distraction.) I almost usually do read every comment on a post until I put up the next one--at which point I move on.
For what my august opinion is worth, you did right regarding WigWag's comments--all of them. If we're that terrified of differing opinions, we can only be products of union-public schools. Like others, though, I think your "too disgusting" threshold is too subjective, and you should lose that. I do disagree with the idea of yelling Parklife whenever we don't like someone's comments. Better to engage or ignore. Squawking aimlessly only wastes electrons and others' pixels.
Regarding Substack's <i>Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes credible threats of physical harm to people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition</i>: this is highly objectionable to me. In the US, anyway, it's illegal to incite violence. Full stop. Substack's apparent decision to allow violence incitement, so long as it's not against Substack's precious categories, is reprehensible. Intended or not, that's what they've done with their enumerated list. "Behavior includes" is too limiting.
I disagree with Musk's decision regarding Ukraine and the purported naval assault that was blocked. The barbarian has already escalated the war of his invasion with his decision to engage in, and subsequent execution of, his terrorist attacks on civilians and children with his missile and rocket assaults. Successfully attacking the fleet in Sevastopol would go a ways toward reducing those attacks. And reduce the threat to Ukrainian grain shipments. Putin would respond with nuclear war? No. He made clear at the outset of his sensationalist rhetoric, in a moment of seriousness, that he'd go nuclear only if the existence of Russia were at risk. Nothing Putin has said or done since has indicated any alteration of that threshold. Losing to Ukraine in no way threatens Russian existence, and it only raises the risk to him personally by a little bit.
It's time to choose, and to take a stand, even for Musk. Although regarding Sevastopol and other distant targets, it may be that Ukraine inventiveness would make Starlink superfluous for such purposes. Their drones are quite remarkable, and growing ever more so.
Finally: How about a price list, or minimum bid, for your principles? Some might be worth the price. I double dog dare you.
In 1978, a group of Neo-Nazis announced their intention to assemble and march in Skokie, Illinois, a community that was home to a number of survivors of the Shoah.
At great risk to its reputation and financial security, the ACLU offered to defend the fascist group; a decision that led to remarkable consternation amongst many of its members. The ACLU did the right thing.
The ACLU justified its decision by pointing out that the same laws it cited to defend the Neo-Nazi’s rights to free speech and assembly were precisely the same laws the organization used to defend the right of civil rights groups to assemble and march in the south despite the suggestion that allowing these groups to march could lead to violence.
It is almost certain that the ACLU would make a different decision today. The ACLU is a fundamentally different organization today than it was then. People of good will can differ about which version, the old or the new, they prefer. I prefer the older version.
Like the ACLU, the ADL is a very different organization with very different aspirations than it had at its founding. In my view, the current version of the ADL has lost its way so completely that it is a mere shadow of its former self. I don’t think Musk’s lawsuit has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, but if by some miracle it did, and the ADL was financially ruined, I don’t believe it would be missed.
Ironically, if the ACLU was presented with the case of the Neo-Nazis in Skokie today and it decided to defend their right to march, I think it’s almost certain that today’s ADL would lambast the ACLU as a hate group. That’s how far American democracy and civil discourse has deteriorated.
It is true that Elon Musk’s Twitter is not bound by the First Amendment, but Musk has stated that his goal for Twitter is to serve as a global public square. To facilitate that, he rightly wants to keep censorship to a minimum and he doesn’t want to employ cadres of employees who’s job it is weed out bigoted tweets no matter how despicable. I think Musk is right; once you empower the censors, their mandate inevitably expands and the censorship regime becomes all-encompassing. We know this is true because it’s precisely what happened with pre-Musk Twitter, especially with American intelligence agencies and the FBI intimidating Twitter’s censors to eliminate content the Government didn’t like.
Putting up with the availability of bigoted comments (that no one needs to read) is a small price to pay for the creation of a forum where all opinions can be expressed. Cancel culture is bad; the censors are always the bad guys, never the good guys.
Claire, there are more Substacks and online publications where my views are in the majority than I can shake a stick at. I read some of them but I comment at none of them. The Cosmopolitan Globalist is the only site where I write comments. Partly it’s because I don’t want to spend my entire life writing comments; I mostly do it for the fun of it. More importantly, it’s far more interesting to engage people that I disagree with than I agree with.
Although I disagree with you and some of your readers about many things, a major reason I subscribe is because your writing is so good; brilliant, actually.
Really? I don't think I've ever looked at the comments there. I wonder why they're so deranged? The NYT is quite good about policing their comments. They're predictably dopy and they always conform to the Party Line, but I certainly wouldn't say they display anything like a "troubling level of hatred." I wonder why the Post doesn't set some standards?
That's what I wonder about, Claire. I read the NYT, too, and just as you say, they do a good job screening them. For whatever reason, the Post allows particularly nasty ad hominem attacks on politicians, columnists, and even fellow commenters. Of course, 99% of targets are right of center.
I am neither a Musk fan nor a Musk hater, but I think he was in a no-win situation. If indeed the result of the Ukranian attack had been a nuclear retaliation, we would have had 1) nuclear war, and 2) no end of stories in the NYT about how Musk's interference led to nuclear war. No, we didn't elect Musk, but the real question is why would Ukraine need to rely on him instead of its allies in the first place?
I‘d say Starlink provides capabilities which keep Ukraine in the game. If it wasn’t for this technology, Russia would‘ve been able to hack and/or disrupt all Ukrainian military and civilian communications. The strategic and military value of Starlink can‘t be overstated.
I think Musk made a catastrophically bad decision and was clearly manipulated by classic Russian reflexive control, but I don't think he's morally to blame here. We are--for outsourcing capabilities like this to Elon Musk. We need *everything* we've contracted with him to provide (if it's related to national security) to be under the appropriate chain of command--which should be headed *only* by our elected commander-in-chief. If this means buying it, we need to buy it. If this means building it, we need to build it. But this is not a remotely acceptable situation: No one elected Musk. He's psychologically, intellectually, and financially beholden to US adversaries, and he should not have this power.
That’s a national security argument, and national security trumps all. Must didn’t even consider consulting with US officials on a matter of national security, relying only on Russian regime members and his own judgment. Shame on him, and shame on us for depending on the likes of him. Hope we learn that lesson well and do something about it.
“I would not want my late grandmother to know I’m associated in any way with someone who would say such a thing.”
That's very subjective, both on my part, and how I perceive my late grandmother. I'm reasonable certain that there are essays that you write, that I think are good essays, but are such that I wouldn't want my late grandmother to know I'm associated in any way with someone who would say such a thing.
Except in instances of actual incitement to violence or gross obscenity, I find the reporting of comments to be odious and underhanded. Claire runs this space and it's up to her to decide what is and is not acceptable. Heaven knows I read many things online that annoy or even outrage me. Sometimes I comment on them. Never would I demand they be censored.
Admittedly, the spate of antisemitic garbage of the kind polluting X is infuriating and troubling. But should it be banned? I don't know. Once could certainly argue that it constitutes incitement to violence. But then the same could be said of the antisemitism of the Left, on campus and elsewhere. If the stuff on X should be banned, then so should the claims of leftie academics and student activists that Israel is an apartheid state, that the Jews are committing genocide against the Palestinian Arabs, etc. Hatred is indivisible is it not?
At a minimum, Musk shouldn’t promote it for fun and (lack of?) profit.
"If they have the exclusive right to interpret and enforce the guidelines, why am I being asked to do it?"
The answer, Claire - okay, a response - has everything to do with the legalese that binds and bounds the Internet.
While not the same, the two terms, "moderation" and "curation" (which appear soon after the snippet I quote), are similar. Any hateful speech or hurt or negative whatever would be the sole responsibility of the conduit provider; here, Substack. By instead offloading the curation decision to its content providers - in this instance, you, Claire - Substack abrogates its responsibility for the hateful or harmful whatever. The legal responsibility now belongs to the content provider, you. This difference between conduit and content was, up to ~20 years ago, used to be a big thing, Chinese firewalls put into place to protect their separation. But then conduits decided to offer content and the firewalls were dismantled. (It used to be either a) you offered the best conduit but were content-agnostic so as to create a home for the best content. Or b) you offered the best content and searched for the best conduit for your content. The two were mutually exclusive for each to achieve a superlative state of existence. No more.)
All of this is rather silly, when you pause for even a fleeting moment to think about it. After all, Substack nudged you in the direction it wants you to go, "Do this or lose access to Substack." A sharp attorney could argue Substack has assumed ownership of the problem; in effect, you became a Substack employee. Substack of course does not see it that way, or tries to convince you, the content providers, Substack the firm does not. Moral suasion sometimes works better when it arrives with those damnable Terms of Service. This whole moderation and curation thing has the conduit providers - Substack, et alii - tied in knots how to maintain their conduit, make beaucoup bucks... and not face legal peril for moderation and curation; for owning what Cosmopolitan Globalist's readers say in the comment replies... What Cosmopolitan Globalist's EiC writes on Substack.
The mono-directional agreement (Terms of Service) imposed by Large Tech on its users is onerous and repugnant. The problem for the content provider ensues when he or she wants to create his or her own conduit - in addition to creating the content. Yikes!
The grammarian is required to parse the footnotes because... well, the dirty little secret with a lot of www fine print is... it is borrowed (as in, copied and pasted) from other extant sites. Owners of a new site cobble together from 2 or 3 or 4 other sites' fine print to 'create' their own. A grammarian? Just add more cost to an already-scant budget. And anyway, who really knows whether their new site, www.thingamajig.com will ever hit critical mass? So they punt. And if they make it, then come the lawyers with their legalese.
I'm not entirely certain he's real. He just checks too many of the same boxes "Western media lies, you should check out this RT article" crowd that arose with Trump.
But I wouldn't report a post for sophistry.
As a conservative, I find myself agreeing with two thirds of Wiggy’s average comment. It’s the last third that’s always a bridge way, way too far.
I enjoy reading comments from well-informed and thoughtful people, whether or not their views align with my own thinking, but I do sometimes enjoy reading a short diatribe or a feisty riposte when a reader (or Claire), takes issue with someone's statement or PoV. There are times when passion is called for in defense of a strongly-held principle. Often that's not the case very in typical comments sections, where people like to blow off steam -- so unlike here in CG!
If the reader who reported my comment to Substack would like to reveal their identity, we could engage in a spirited but polite debate right here in Claire’s comment section. I’m genuinely interested to know what about that comment was viewed as so outside the boundaries of propriety that it merited being reported.
I’m probably just an old fogey but I think it was better when the ACLU decided who to defend based on the legitimacy of the rights being claimed not the identity or political views of the claimant. I also think it was better when the ADL saw its mission as fighting antisemitism rather than acting as a self-appointed censor of social media platforms.
I remember fondly the days when tattletales were viewed with skepticism and the words “I’m gonna tell on you” were uttered only by little children.
Also interested to know - I found your first comment overly personal and hackle-raising enough to write a roundabout response, but nowhere near the boundary...
I am going to press my newly fashioned "Even Loud Hectoring Critics Ain't Censors" button again though. Looks to me like a lot of reasonable folk are bothered by a sense of mission creep at the ADL, but it really really isn't a censor. It's a lobby. People can ignore it if they like.
If you wanted to stage a play in London that was rude about the royal family or otherwise offended morals, up until 1968 the Lord Chamberlain really could stop you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatres_Act_1968
That's a real censor. These lobby groups are just enthusiastic amateurs.
Tom, pre-Musk Twitter hired a multitude of comment referees with the mandate of screening out abusive and bigoted comments and comments that threatened violence. This was fine, as long as the comments that were deplatformed were genuinely the type that any reasonable person would want to eliminate.
The staff that Twitter hired were generally very young with little work experience. During the pandemic they primarily worked from home and reviewed comments, I suspect, between coffee runs to Starbucks after which they returned to their small but overpriced San Francisco apartments. This may be a bit of a caricature, but you get my point.
The youngsters were led by Yoel Roth, a Swarthmore graduate who later earned a Ph.D. in communications from the Annenberg School. When Twitter, arguably the most important social media site in the world, hired Roth to be its comment-moderator in chief it was basically his first real job (other than a few trivial academic research positions).
The end result was that Twitter had a young, inexperienced corporate executive leading a group of young, inexperienced censors responsible for removing comments that putatively violated Twitter’s policies.
If that was as far as it went, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Sadly that was not as far as it went.
In short order two things happened: Twitter hired very senior former FBI officials to keep an eye on what it’s young censors we’re doing and, next thing you know, the FBI and various Intelligence Agencies are bombarding Twitter with “suggestions” about comments that should be deleted. Whether the FBI’s actions were violations of the First Amendment is currently being tested in Federal Court in Missouri and in a law suit brought by the famous Covid vaccine skeptic, Alex Berenson.
During Congressional testimony Roth and other Twitter employees admitted that they took down the Hunter Biden lap top story at the behest of the FBI even though it violated no Twitter policies. They also admitted that they took down numerous comments about masks and COVID vaccines that contradicted Government recommendations. Twitter’s behavior was not a violation of the First Amendment which doesn’t apply to private companies, but it was clearly censorship. Twitter has a right to censor if it chooses to but we should call what the company did by its real name.
I think all this was inevitable. Content moderation expands into its ultimate manifestation; censorship.
There’s an irony here; Musk’s Twitter now censors more than it did before he purchased the platform. He has little choice. Governments around the world, especially in Europe and Asia insist on it and threaten to financially sanction or ban Twitter if it doesn’t comply with their demands.
None of this should be particularly surprising. We live in an increasingly disintermediated world and like all large institutions with monopolistic powers Governments are not happy with seeing their power diluted. In the old days, Governments had just a small number of newspapers or broadcast outlets to contend with. Now anyone with a social media account or YouTube access can operate as a “newspaper” or broadcast outlet. This makes the flow of information much harder to control and I don’t think most Government agencies like that at all.
Political leaders of all stripes have a narrative to promote and its not surprising that they will resort to almost anything, including censorship, to prevent their narratives from being criticized or exposed.
I’m not entirely sure but I think he’s very attentive to censoring material that foreign countries he needs to appease ask him to censor. For example, he will never say anything excessively critical of China because that country is the second most important market for Tesla. There are plenty of Tweets critical of China on X but whether he’s deplatformed comments that could be viewed by the Chinese Government as excessively critical I do not know. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has.
I do know that many European Governments have adopted policies that require social media sites to curate tweets within an inch of their lives and that India has done the same thing. As an American I don’t care about that very much; it’s not my business. I am curious though why citizens of democratic European nations are so disinterested in Government-mandated policies dictating what they can read and what they can’t.
The bureaucrats in the EU are particularly enthusiastic about the censorship exercise. It’s one of many things that I don’t like about the EU. Canada under Trudeau (he’s the worst leader of any Western nation) is also heading in the wrong direction.
Personally I respect Musk but I have no sympathy for him. Before he bought Twitter he must have realized that advertisers were completely averse to being associated with controversial remarks. Just a couple of years ago, comments contradicting leftist shibboleths were an anathema to advertisers (just ask Fox News). With the advent of the Bud Light and Target controversies over trans issues they are now equally averse to offending the shibboleths held dear by the right.
If Musk thought Twitter could ever survive as a censorship-free space and still rely on advertisers to finance the Company he was delusional. By the way, he was warned about this ahead of time by Twitter executives including the aforementioned Yoel Roth.
If he wants X to be financially viable, Musk will have to come up with a way to induce all of his readers to subscribe. His early changes to the blue-check system were a step in this direction. I don’t think a financial model based on advertising has any chance of prospering in a censorship-free environment. Advertisers are not just nervous about bigotry, pornography and threats of violence, they also don’t like political controversy.
It will be interesting to see how Musk navigates around this reality.
“I think the time has passed, but there probably was room for an open platform that "right-sized" the moderation challenge from the start, had a clear "just tough enough" policy it could resource and stick to, with monetization strategies that didn't leave them beholden to conflict as a source of income...” (Tom Fleming)
I think you might be right though I suspect that it would be hard for the referees to stick to their remit and not fall into the black hole of censorship.
Pre-Musk Twitter would have been a perfect laboratory to test your hypothesis but Twitter blew it. The company’s first mistake was hiring young and inexperienced referees.
The youngsters were handed a fair amount of power despite their inexperience. They were easily intimidated by government officials who contacted them but intimidation wasn’t the only factor. Most of the them had only recently graduated from colleges where tattletale culture was ascendent and political correctness ruled. Steeped in an acute sensitivity to microaggresions, that their curation decisions were impacted by this reality should surprise no one.
Even more importantly, Twitter began hiring former FBI officials (and retired officials from intelligence agencies) with reckless abandon. Scores of retired agents were hired to serve in very senior positions at the social media site. See,
https://nypost.com/2022/12/17/twitter-leadership-full-of-former-fbi-agents-linkedin-records-show/amp/
It should surprise no one that these newly hired executives would be particularly solicitous of their old colleagues when the FBI came calling requesting that tweets be deplatformed. But it wasn’t only a question of helping out old friends; these agents brought a mind set with them and protecting the sanctity of the First Amendment was certainly not at the top of their list.
Sadly, we are unlikely to know whether a light but sufficiently aggressive moderation policy could have been enacted.
Thanks WW for a very clear argument (across 3 replies now...).
Agrees first:
1. Twitter, and big tech in general, are very good at the tech part but naive to hapless on bigger picture governance questions. FB was probably worse, Google a bit better, but Twitter absolutely struggled with moderation and ended up doing bizarre things (not all in the direction of banning content either).
2. Moderation will always have a slippery slope to it. The rules can't be mechanical; as well as bad faith content, you'll have bad faith complaints; it's going to be hard work - but IMO not impossible or futile - to hold the line. (FWIW it seems Twitter and similar platforms had a deeper conflict, which was the early realisation that fights drove positive engagement and were good for business - so they weren't *really* keen on tough moderation).
3. If the government can force (or effectively threaten) you to remove content, that IS censorship! I read the link you added - it's clear that while the latest ruling tossed a lot of the earlier findings against the government, it does find the government "likely coerced the platforms" - I dug out the ruling from https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf p42. The court also seems to cleave closer to your usage of "censor" than mine(!). (The Berenson case you mentioned seems to have settled after narrowing down to a contractual question, not First Amendment stuff). I'm no Covid sceptic or anti-vaxxer but it does bother me that governments (even relatively liberal ones) seemed so enthusiastic about clamping down on pretty mild dissent.
4. And more generally, governments everywhere do want to control the message in more subtle ways. They employee a lot of PR & comms people to do it, here in the UK too, and the press are often alarmingly pliant.
BUT...
5. We've moved on from the ADL and ACLU where you started. In my book - still just enthusiastic amateurs. They can't ban anything (they can lobby govt to if they like - that's democracy). Important not to forget this point.
6. [Guess this is the nub] Private platforms can and *should* be worried about offensive drivel and damaging disinformation. Within their terms of service, it's reasonable (and damned hard work) to suppress messages that create an obvious risk of harm. [Deep breath; pausing to adjust conspiracy-resistant mask & underwear] Being specific, in the context of the long & widely advertised aim of Republican operatives (RG et al) to harvest dirt on Hunter B, and similar willingness of foreign powers to oblige, you'd need to be an idiot *not* to take a dim view of Hunter "hack" stories and the implications. Even if they made mistakes in how they called it at the time, it would have been a bigger mistake to wash their hands of the question.
Against all this, does Musk count as an improvement at least in his willingness to tell government to **** off? I'm really not convinced (and as you've noted, outside US he doesn't seem to bother). It just looks like he's politically aligned in a different and more capricious, less transparent but no less troubling way, with the subtracted bonus of the torrent of filth that set off Claire's previous post.
I think the time has passed, but there probably was room for an open platform that "right-sized" the moderation challenge from the start, had a clear "just tough enough" policy it could resource and stick to, with monetization strategies that didn't leave them beholden to conflict as a source of income [noted your subscription point above - agree something like this is pivotal]; saw the risks of being seen to be too close to any government agency and so kept a clear & transparent divide between (mandatory) compliance and autonomous moderation; and owned up very quickly when it got things wrong. Covid was very tough but not the norm. Old Twitter didn't manage this; don't think new X is anywhere nearer to be honest. Sad?
Is Musk still censoring those critical of his businesses? I don’t follow this stuff very much. My main info on these things come from you and Claire, WigWag.
Yeah, he is.
He’s just shamming and glamming libertarian catchphrases for his increasingly incel bro fanbois. How long before Twitter’s 4Chan 2.0?
About six months, I think. But I'm not exaggerating. It will be Gab or Parler in another six months. Even the most die-hard are leaving now--all of the people who've been saying, "I will not leave because someone has to stay here and defend decency." Meaning: "I will stay here because I can't believe this has really happened to my beloved Twitter. Despite myself, I think somehow this will be fixed, because you *can't* just do this to Twitter, can you? Twitter is just too important!"
But even I am slowly realizing that yes, Twitter is really over, and it's never coming back.
The vandalism of it--it's such a loss.
Here’s an addendum to my comment, Tom. I just noticed that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the Biden Administration violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media platforms into removing some content. Note that I haven’t read the decision, just press reports on the decision. Apparently the Appeals Court narrowed the injunction of the trial court but left it’s most important finding intact.
At least in the states that fall within the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit, the Biden Administration will now be far more constrained in its ability to demand that content be deleted. See,
https://missouriindependent.com/briefs/court-reduces-restrictions-on-biden-administration-contact-with-social-media-platforms/
Just back to note... a whole load of odd stuff has happened on this story since. A response from the White House, a bizzare counter-move and now this?
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/5th-circuit-withdraws-order-biden-social-media-clerk
Tom, I could be wrong about this but my understanding is that the administrative stay ordered by Justice Alito on the limited injunction granted by the 5th Circuit is scheduled to expire at 11:59 pm tomorrow (Wednesday). If it expires the injunction (such as it is) becomes effective. Alternatively, before the Administrative Stay expires the Supreme Court might issue an order overturning the injunction or granting certiorari to consider the case in greater detail.
We shall see.
What was the ADL doing with Twitter that wasn’t fighting antisemitism? They certainly didn’t censor anything on Twitter, which they had no technical ability to do.
I reread all the comments, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what was reportable.
Yeah I didn't read his last comment, but globalists show WigWag some love. He is a much more articulate and subdued right wing populist than any you're going to listen to on Fox or on Breitbart or anything like that. I thought I hated him when I first subscribed. I thought he was a noisome far right cretan and a zealot. But after talking to him from time to time, what I think now is: if only they were all like dear Wigwag. If only every right wing populist were as civilized and approachable as he is. He is proof that maybe in fact there is what you could call a school of thought behind what to most of us here see as a great big shitstorm of irrationalism, self-pity, inferiority, and resentment. I think Wigwag is fundamentally wrong that since Trump became president in 2016, therefore "the people have spoken." Or that even if it were the case that "the people have spoken," it follows that liberalism should be ripped out root and branch. This is obviously an absurdity, if not a license for anarchy and tyranny, and I abhor it with every cell of my being, as James Madison, Alexis de Toqueville, and Edmund Burke would have also been aghast. And it surprises me that someone as intelligent as Wigwag who doesn't seem particularly resentful either can arrive at these infantile conclusions regarding the unbounded deservingness of aggrieved citizens, and the capacity of the modern state to reward their infinite needs. That is to say nothing of the morality of the notion. Moreover that morally one could entertain such a glib and unthought-out proposition that to me is unthinkable, really gets to me. I think he must simply have a deep hatred of the neoliberal establishment and he simply has not followed his ideas to their conclusions, because he's having so much fun enjoying the spectacle and how it scares the elites. Because no one in their right mind would desire oligarchy if one knew that's where one's radical political thought inexorably led. But Wigwag is not just to be admired for being one of Claire's most avid readers. Any of you who can't stand him should appreciate how his presence challenges us to defend our beliefs in democratic capitalism. We should be grateful to Wigwag and we should be thanking him for his close-reading, his honesty and his engagement.
Thanks very much for the kind words!
And oh, yeah: what do you mean you don't read every jot and tittle of our comments!? What else you got going on?
Eric Hines
I mostly do. But if someone leaves a comment months after an article was published (which happens quite often, actually), I don't have the notifications set to let me know. (If I set them to "notify me whenever there's a new comment," I'd go mad from the distraction.) I almost usually do read every comment on a post until I put up the next one--at which point I move on.
For what my august opinion is worth, you did right regarding WigWag's comments--all of them. If we're that terrified of differing opinions, we can only be products of union-public schools. Like others, though, I think your "too disgusting" threshold is too subjective, and you should lose that. I do disagree with the idea of yelling Parklife whenever we don't like someone's comments. Better to engage or ignore. Squawking aimlessly only wastes electrons and others' pixels.
Regarding Substack's <i>Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes credible threats of physical harm to people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition</i>: this is highly objectionable to me. In the US, anyway, it's illegal to incite violence. Full stop. Substack's apparent decision to allow violence incitement, so long as it's not against Substack's precious categories, is reprehensible. Intended or not, that's what they've done with their enumerated list. "Behavior includes" is too limiting.
I disagree with Musk's decision regarding Ukraine and the purported naval assault that was blocked. The barbarian has already escalated the war of his invasion with his decision to engage in, and subsequent execution of, his terrorist attacks on civilians and children with his missile and rocket assaults. Successfully attacking the fleet in Sevastopol would go a ways toward reducing those attacks. And reduce the threat to Ukrainian grain shipments. Putin would respond with nuclear war? No. He made clear at the outset of his sensationalist rhetoric, in a moment of seriousness, that he'd go nuclear only if the existence of Russia were at risk. Nothing Putin has said or done since has indicated any alteration of that threshold. Losing to Ukraine in no way threatens Russian existence, and it only raises the risk to him personally by a little bit.
It's time to choose, and to take a stand, even for Musk. Although regarding Sevastopol and other distant targets, it may be that Ukraine inventiveness would make Starlink superfluous for such purposes. Their drones are quite remarkable, and growing ever more so.
Finally: How about a price list, or minimum bid, for your principles? Some might be worth the price. I double dog dare you.
Eric Hines
If your mid-teens mockney memetics are rusty, this link explains a bit more about parklife: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/parklife-emerges-as-the-internet-s-favourite-way-to-mock-russell-brand-9838182.html
Somehow feels apt that Brand himself has drifted from street-left to conspiracist right, aided by Covid lockdowns.
In 1978, a group of Neo-Nazis announced their intention to assemble and march in Skokie, Illinois, a community that was home to a number of survivors of the Shoah.
At great risk to its reputation and financial security, the ACLU offered to defend the fascist group; a decision that led to remarkable consternation amongst many of its members. The ACLU did the right thing.
The ACLU justified its decision by pointing out that the same laws it cited to defend the Neo-Nazi’s rights to free speech and assembly were precisely the same laws the organization used to defend the right of civil rights groups to assemble and march in the south despite the suggestion that allowing these groups to march could lead to violence.
It is almost certain that the ACLU would make a different decision today. The ACLU is a fundamentally different organization today than it was then. People of good will can differ about which version, the old or the new, they prefer. I prefer the older version.
Like the ACLU, the ADL is a very different organization with very different aspirations than it had at its founding. In my view, the current version of the ADL has lost its way so completely that it is a mere shadow of its former self. I don’t think Musk’s lawsuit has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, but if by some miracle it did, and the ADL was financially ruined, I don’t believe it would be missed.
Ironically, if the ACLU was presented with the case of the Neo-Nazis in Skokie today and it decided to defend their right to march, I think it’s almost certain that today’s ADL would lambast the ACLU as a hate group. That’s how far American democracy and civil discourse has deteriorated.
It is true that Elon Musk’s Twitter is not bound by the First Amendment, but Musk has stated that his goal for Twitter is to serve as a global public square. To facilitate that, he rightly wants to keep censorship to a minimum and he doesn’t want to employ cadres of employees who’s job it is weed out bigoted tweets no matter how despicable. I think Musk is right; once you empower the censors, their mandate inevitably expands and the censorship regime becomes all-encompassing. We know this is true because it’s precisely what happened with pre-Musk Twitter, especially with American intelligence agencies and the FBI intimidating Twitter’s censors to eliminate content the Government didn’t like.
Putting up with the availability of bigoted comments (that no one needs to read) is a small price to pay for the creation of a forum where all opinions can be expressed. Cancel culture is bad; the censors are always the bad guys, never the good guys.
Claire, there are more Substacks and online publications where my views are in the majority than I can shake a stick at. I read some of them but I comment at none of them. The Cosmopolitan Globalist is the only site where I write comments. Partly it’s because I don’t want to spend my entire life writing comments; I mostly do it for the fun of it. More importantly, it’s far more interesting to engage people that I disagree with than I agree with.
Although I disagree with you and some of your readers about many things, a major reason I subscribe is because your writing is so good; brilliant, actually.
The commenters here are great. The worst comment section in the country, in my view, is the Washington Post's. The level of hatred is truly troubling.
Really? I don't think I've ever looked at the comments there. I wonder why they're so deranged? The NYT is quite good about policing their comments. They're predictably dopy and they always conform to the Party Line, but I certainly wouldn't say they display anything like a "troubling level of hatred." I wonder why the Post doesn't set some standards?
That's what I wonder about, Claire. I read the NYT, too, and just as you say, they do a good job screening them. For whatever reason, the Post allows particularly nasty ad hominem attacks on politicians, columnists, and even fellow commenters. Of course, 99% of targets are right of center.
I am neither a Musk fan nor a Musk hater, but I think he was in a no-win situation. If indeed the result of the Ukranian attack had been a nuclear retaliation, we would have had 1) nuclear war, and 2) no end of stories in the NYT about how Musk's interference led to nuclear war. No, we didn't elect Musk, but the real question is why would Ukraine need to rely on him instead of its allies in the first place?
I‘d say Starlink provides capabilities which keep Ukraine in the game. If it wasn’t for this technology, Russia would‘ve been able to hack and/or disrupt all Ukrainian military and civilian communications. The strategic and military value of Starlink can‘t be overstated.
I think Musk made a catastrophically bad decision and was clearly manipulated by classic Russian reflexive control, but I don't think he's morally to blame here. We are--for outsourcing capabilities like this to Elon Musk. We need *everything* we've contracted with him to provide (if it's related to national security) to be under the appropriate chain of command--which should be headed *only* by our elected commander-in-chief. If this means buying it, we need to buy it. If this means building it, we need to build it. But this is not a remotely acceptable situation: No one elected Musk. He's psychologically, intellectually, and financially beholden to US adversaries, and he should not have this power.
That’s a national security argument, and national security trumps all. Must didn’t even consider consulting with US officials on a matter of national security, relying only on Russian regime members and his own judgment. Shame on him, and shame on us for depending on the likes of him. Hope we learn that lesson well and do something about it.
One thing the US government could do about this problem, is building up a similar satellite network and boot Space Karen out.
“Space Karen...” 😆
Exactly.
“I would not want my late grandmother to know I’m associated in any way with someone who would say such a thing.”
That's very subjective, both on my part, and how I perceive my late grandmother. I'm reasonable certain that there are essays that you write, that I think are good essays, but are such that I wouldn't want my late grandmother to know I'm associated in any way with someone who would say such a thing.
World view is subjective.
Musk was a hero when he gave Ukraine Starlink (after Russia deliberately tried to silence Ukrainian communications).
Musk became a goat when he (apparently) shut down some portions of Ukrainian communications.
You get the bad with the good.
I notice that the Ukrainian government has not told Musk to take his terminals out.
That would suggest that on balance, they see Musk's Starlink as a net positive.
Genius! It's only week two and I feel like I got more than my (discount annual subs) money's worth already.
And I'm with WigWag (and you) - you pays, you gets to comment. And I've always followed people who are worth disagreeing with.
There's No Other Way...
That's your literal Putinism, nonsensical manifest destiny and all, right there.
Get your own taxi.
This comment is vile. I'll let it stand, but this is disgusting. If this keeps up, I'll start taking your comments down.
Why should you add any such thing? Boasts, non-sequiturs and vacant allusions in place of any argument.
It's "parklife" from me.
Bye, Felicia.